A landscaped public park with a children’s playground has been combined with an underground car park in this architectural programme to fit effortlessly into its alpine setting while meeting the specifics of its brief. All the surrounding topographical elements have been taken into account: the valley slopes, the church - the dominant architectural feature - and the stretches of residual meadowland. The new landscaped park slips into its setting, mediating between two distinct areas: the small urban cluster and the stretches of open slopes.
The below-grade car park sits underneath the landscaped park. The programme meets a series of correlated requirements. By “artificially” recreating the original topography, it inserts a facility like an underground car park into a rural setting without causing an eyesore. The circulation pathways serving the various functional sections of the new park, although often adjacent, never overlap. Lastly, the latest addition to the landscape creates a new visual focus that offsets the landmark church.
The new park includes a children’s playground (laid out as partly overlapping circular areas), zones for individual and team sports (tennis, 5-side football, and beach volley), and two separate Cor-ten-clad cylindrical volumes housing dressing rooms and toilets placed so as to dialogue with nearby trees.
On the west side of the park close to the perimeter, a long raised timber-slat “terrace” supported by a steel grid creates an open skylight and ventilation grid for the car park below. The entrances to the below-grade area are on the south side near the parsonage. The vehicle approach is asphalted while the pedestrian walkway is unrendered concrete.
The car park has 80 open car bays and 10 garages. The reinforced concrete structure is a clearly visible feature throughout, offset by epoxy resin flooring.
Inserted into the slope, the car park connects with the...
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